Dead Flag Blues
Thoughts as I fall asleep and want to dream of a better world
The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles
It went like this:
The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair
-Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Dead Flag Blues
To all the children buried in rubble from the building we collapsed with long range missiles to kill a man that didn't live there anymore in a war they'll never understand but continues to bombard the buildings around them every fucking day afterwards, I am sorry. The worst part is, the part you’ll never understand now with bones broken chewed apart by cement and plaster and drywall that crushed you is this:
It didn't have to be this way.
We could have chosen a million different things, but again and again and again we choose war and death and famine and poverty and violence. Politicians label them with patriotic pride, wrap it in nationalist vengeance, and sell it to their constituents who buy it with fervor and greed on payment plans they cannot afford the cost of, who will watch it from TV sets as they scroll past shopping channels, missile barrages, movie reruns, car bombs, sitcoms, who will complain that there's 200 channels but nothing on. Who will say that there’s always been fighting over there and not recognize that they were paid for it.
It didn’t have to be this way.
It went like this. A contract is made. A company hires workers. An assembly line is constructed. They build pieces, to a terrible plan, exacting specifications. They never see the end product, it’s easier to ship in pieces. They make the parts that you need to build your bombs to start your wars to kill children and smother innocents when you destroy schools and hospitals and power grids and apartment complexes because this is how war is done, how it’s always been done. You destroy what will make someone hurt, and say there were valid targets inside so that no one accuses you of being uncivilized, of breaking the rules. Their destruction is our growth. The parts we sell you make our GNDP swell. Our jobs numbers for first quarter are terrific. Inflation reduces. Recession fears diminish. The economy swells. Investments mature. Our trade partnership strengthens. Every day we choose to create a world where production and growth are all that matters. Human lives do not matter. Your life, short, terrified, bloody, does not matter.
It didn’t have to be this way.
I fell asleep last night wondering how much death happens every hour. How many bombs, missiles, drone strikes, bullets? How many are dying from forced starvation that we watch silently across the world? While I hope for eight hours, how many are hoping for one more minute?
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We put more worth in a fiat money we made up, a collective agreement that holds no real value, than we do in human life. We put more worth in something mass produced than we do in something irreplaceable. To remake the world, we just have to choose the opposite.
My thoughts have been heavy lately. This happens regularly when I pick my head up from the screen in front of my face and remember what’s happening outside the comfortable confines of my daily existence. I feel at times an overwhelming, unlabeled grief for people I never knew. This is what it means to be alive and empathetic in the world today. This is what it means to understand there are different ways of being that we choose not to pursue. So it goes.
More fiction coming in the next few weeks.
Cover photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
Maybe if they had bigger TV sets and scrolled past pricier shopping channels, more numerous missile barrages, lamer movie reruns, more terrifying car bombs, unfunnier sitcoms, and complained about 300 channels with nothing on - it would be their pleasure to bomb us instead!